


Bark Up There

by scribe-tuesday (Leofuller)



Series: Back Up There [16]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Not the NHL
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-15 04:23:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13023168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leofuller/pseuds/scribe-tuesday
Summary: Every single story in the Back Up There series takes place within the same universe, and any event mentioned in any story is canon for all the stories.Except this one. This one is an AU of the verse. This is the werewolf AU.This is McSpot's Christmas present, because werewolves.





	1. Karl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [McSpot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/McSpot/gifts).



> Every single story in the Back Up There series takes place within the same universe, and any event mentioned in any story is canon for all the stories.
> 
> Except this one. This one is an AU of the verse. This is the werewolf AU.
> 
> This is McSpot's Christmas present, because werewolves.

It’s the night before the full moon.

The  _ actual _ full moon is fine, because any werewolf just gets more focused on the game, they play with more energy and no less skill, even if the checks do get a little… rougher.

The night before the moon, though, they just get stroppy. In an actual game most of them learn to lock it down if they make it out of juniors - nobody schedules rec league games for full moons - and idiots like Craig Patterson from the Cobras get scratched because dressing a werewolf who’s known to have control issues is asking for league sanctions.

The EIHA might have a pretty inconsistent attitude to safety and discipline, but they don’t like werewolves who can’t lock it down on the ice.

 

It’s not a game night tonight, though, it’s Tuesday training and Karl’s…

Karl probably shouldn’t be here, to be honest. Steve should have sent him home as soon as he walked in - except that Steve’s human and the only member of the coaching staff who’s a werewolf is at home with a teething puppy so there was nobody in authority who could smell the state Karl’s in.

It’s pretty obvious  _ now _ that Karl’s not in an appropriate frame of mind for training, but it’s a bit late to do anything about it now that he’s kitted up and in possession of his net.

Steve’s got three of the human guys practicing line rushes and slapshots against Karl, and everybody else is working with Jack up at the other end. It’s fine.

It’s fine, they’ve done this sort of thing before.

 

Westy and Cody are both werewolves, so they’re up at Jack’s end of the ice for obvious reasons. They’re a little more competitive than normal, but mostly with each other and it’s all friendly stuff, so Jack’s not worried about suddenly getting his net rushed by two players’ worth of enthusiastic werewolf. 

It does bring everything to a stop, though, when they both freeze and turn towards the far end of the ice just as Tom rushes a little too close to Karl. Karl snarls at him, takes a stride towards him that makes Tom drop his stick and back off. Jack holds his breath, hoping that Karl’s not going to break another player’s stick because that always makes him unpopular, and Taylor takes advantage of his lack of attention to try to chip the puck past him.

Taylor’s only 17, he hasn’t figured out yet that you have to be smart when you’ve got werewolves on the ice and it’s the night before the full moon, and he hasn’t figured out that when there’s werewolf drama going on, you don’t crash the net.

Even the non-werewolf net.

 

It saves Tom’s stick, because Karl’s attention snaps up to Jack’s end of the ice and he discards his own stick, glove and blocker in a trail up the ice as he moves faster than a guy in that much padding should be able to skate.

Cody and Westy also move fast, parting the players and getting themselves and the rest of the team out of Karl’s path. Somebody grabs Taylor by the back of his jersey and hauls him away, counting on the distance between Karl and the rest of them at the point when Taylor crashed the net to mean that when Karl can’t focus on Jack and Taylor at the same time, he’ll head for Jack.

(thanks, guys)

Jack ends up almost inside the net, as Karl starts by making it clear that he’s protecting  _ this _ net now and the rest of the guys had better respect that.

Everybody respects that. Nobody’s looking directly at him, and Taylor’s been tucked discreetly to the back of the group.

Having warned everybody off with his low rumbling growl, Karl turns his attention to making sure that Jack’s okay.

This is actually less weird when Karl’s a wolf, which is saying something. When Karl’s all hairy and he’s got four legs, and he’s snuffling at Jack in somebody’s living room then it’s not that different to Jack’s Grandad’s border collie except that Pippin’s breath isn’t quite so bad. When Karl’s still human-shaped and dressed like a goalie and he’s got Jack trapped against one of the nets, it’s kind of awkward.

“Yeah, alright.” Jack shakes off his glove and grips the front of Karl’s mask, confident after all this time playing together that Karl can’t bite him through the bars and doesn’t want to anyway. He did lick him once, that was also weird. “I’m here, the net’s okay, nobody’s attacking.” He curls his fingers into the bars and shakes Karl’s head gently. “No need to get all growly at people.”

“Um…”

Jack tightens his grip on Karl’s mask when Steve speaks, trying to distract him from turning on the coach. That’s never a good idea, no matter what excuses your biology gives you.

“Do you guys want to go and get changed?”

“I think that’s a good idea.” 

Behind Steve, Cody’s ushering the guys aside so that Jack and Karl have a clear path to the gate and nobody’s going to accidentally challenge anybody else. Jack dumps his blocker on top of the net - somebody else will gather his stuff up for him - and starts for the dressing room. Karl wavers for a second between the now-unprotected net, Jack’s abandoned belongings, and Jack himself, and then takes off after him.

Even with a head start, Jack gets flattened against the boards next to the gates by thirteen and a half stone of werewolf, plus pads, before he has a chance to leave the ice. Luckily he’s expecting it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, I know I said that this story is AU and not canon for the rest of the verse, but if anybody wants to believe that Karl is a werewolf in any story where it is not specifically stated that he's NOT a werewolf, then I can't stop you...


	2. Coop

“Hey Coop, have you seen the video from that ECHL game yet?” Greg drops his bag into his stall.

“Which one?” Matt doesn’t look up from his own bag. He definitely put both socks in here when he packed it.

“The one where a couple of the guys just wolfed out?”

“No!” That does get Matt’s attention. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Greg digs his phone out of his pocket and pulls up the video, patting the bench beside him in invitation to come and sit. “You need to see this.”

It’s not a league that Matt really follows, and he doesn’t recognise the jerseys.

“When was this filmed?”

“Few days ago. Just before the moon, so… Tuesday?”

“Huh.” Matt’s attention is fixed on the screen as one of the guys in green takes a shot on the blue and white netminder, then tries to stuff the rebound in while _clearly_ in the crease. “Oi, that’s…”

Greg laughs at his automatic goaltender outrage as one of the other blue and white guys, obviously of the same opinion, hauls the green player out of the crease with slightly more force than some people might say was necessary.

“Watch number 12.” Greg points out the guy in green racing in from the top left of the screen. “Hang on, we should have the sound on.”

_“ -Dickerson’s coming to Claymore’s aid now, and it looks like… yes, the gloves are coming off.”_

“Ooh, is that that ECHL game?” The locker room door hasn’t even shut behind Rob before he’s interrupting. “Are you watching that compilation?”

“This is the game footage.” Greg tells him, pausing the video just as it’s getting interesting.

“Oh, you want the compilation, it’s much better.” Rob pulls his tablet out of his bag and squeezes into the stall next to Greg, even though there really isn’t room for three guys.

 

There isn’t room for three guys, unless you have either a hockey player’s or a werewolf’s attitude to personal space. Since all three of them have both, there’s plenty of room for three guys in one stall. It’s just cosy.

Matt slings his arm around Greg so that they fit better, and Rob hits play on the new video.

 

It’s been put together by one of those semi-official fans, one of those guys who does a vlog that all the other fans in that part of that league follow.

_“Hey, so, welcome to a special extra episode where we’re just going to look at Tuesday’s game and all the crazy stuff that happened. In case you haven’t already had the background, this was the night before the full moon, Chris Claymore got a bit too close to Maxime Bouchard, and everything got a bit - pardon the pun - hairy.”_

The video cuts to the game footage that they’ve just seen, and Sam ambles into the room and comes over to join them. He doesn’t try to squeeze into the stall with them, although he probably wants to, opting instead to lean against the wooden partition at the side of the stall and press up against Matt’s shoulder.

_“So, as you can see, Ivanov doesn’t like that Claymore’s making his goalie growl, and he starts getting pushy. And as we know, Dicky doesn’t like people pushing the kids around even when the moon’s new so he’s not going to sit back the night before the full moon and let this happen.”_

Dickerson sails into shot and starts whaling on Ivanov. Claymore stands there for a second until the goalie slashes at his legs and he jumps back out of the crease.

 _“And then…”_ the camera swings round suddenly, like it does in any league when a second fight breaks out. _“It all kicks off in front of the benches.”_ His calm explanation is a complete contrast to the action on screen, where a pair of guys are gripping each other’s jerseys and struggling for the upper hand. Another guy in green jumps in, and before the refs can get there he’s been hauled off again by one of the opposing players and there are two fights in front of the bench. The camera pulls back to show that the fight down by the net is pretty much done, Ivanov down on the ice with Dickerson sitting on his back, then zooms in again on the pairs by the bench.

The first pair are still clinging to each other, but Matt’s familiar with the sight of two guys who are both knackered and are just trying to confirm that the other guy also wants to call it a draw. The guys from the last fight, the guy who’d been third-man-in and the guy who’d objected to that, are both still going for it, still swinging punches. One of them’s got blood running down his face from a cut near his eyebrow.

“This is my favourite bit.” Rob announces, with the tones of somebody who’s watched this multiple times. “Watch the lino.”

It’s standard across all leagues, that the officials will be human. It stops the kind of escalations that would be inevitable if an agitated werewolf found himself getting told off by another wolf. There’s nothing in the rules to say that a werewolf _can’t_ be an official, of course, that kind of speciest discrimination is illegal pretty much everywhere these days except parts of South East Asia and some of the Middle East. And Peru, where for some reason they don’t really have much of a werewolf population anyway. Anyway, most hockey seems to happen in countries with significant werewolf populations, where it’s illegal to discriminate based on species, but all referees and linesmen are human and it’s officially a coincidence.

That means that the lino in the video is going to be human. He’s not going to be able to separate two fighting werewolves by subduing them with his superior strength - and the fighters are definitely both wolves. If the snarling didn’t give it away, the rapidly sprouting facial hair and elongated canine teeth certainly would. (Those mouth guards are ruined now.)

It’s a common rumour that there’s a secret section in the rule book about how to handle werewolves. Etiquette breeches. How to use eye contact to make a werewolf listen to you.

How to break up a fight.

Now, Matt doesn’t know if the officials have had werewolf-handling courses or not, but the lino looks very calm as he goes over to the bench, collects a water bottle, heads back to the fight and squirts both guys right in their faces.

Their human teammates jump in while they’re spluttering and squinting, a couple of people from each team gathering the guy in their own jersey and drawing him away from the fight before either of them can get started again.

 

It looks like one of those situations where it takes ages to sort out the penalties, but the vlogger’s focused on the footage of the guy in green - that’s obviously the team he’s a fan of - skating slowly towards the gate. He’s shaking his wet hair back from his face, and the vlogger’s put music over it as the footage plays again, slower, like something from a shampoo advert.

Maxime Bouchard is sitting on top of his net, swinging his feet.

 

“What are you lot all doing in here-” Danny cuts himself off as he spots Rob’s iPad. “What are you watching?”

“Werewolf fight in the ECHL.” Sam tells him. “A bunch of guys kind of lost it.”

“Cool.” Danny drops his bag in his stall and then comes over to rest of them, assessing the way they’re squashed into Greg’s stall and figuring out how to slot himself in. “Anybody get injured?”

“Not so far.”

Danny picks Matt’s lap as the best place to be able to see the screen from, and Matt slides back on the bench to accommodate his weight.

 

Danny’s not actually a werewolf.

He’s 100% human, and nobody in his family’s a werewolf either, which means that he’s picked up everything he knows about interacting with werewolves from the team - and he doesn’t always get it right.

The whole deal with not respecting anybody’s personal space, for example. That’s a werewolf thing, but it’s something you do with werewolves you know well, your family, your pack - your team. It’s not something you do with wolves that you’re not close to, and it’s not something you do with humans unless they’re in your immediate family - and it’s definitely not something you do if you’re a human approaching a group of werewolves.

The thing is, Danny’s human, so the first time he slotted himself into a pile of werewolves in a way that’s just not done he couldn’t smell how surprised they all were. And since he’s kind of everybody’s rookie, nobody would think to push him away, and Matt knows he’s not the only one who sort of likes that Danny’s so tactile with them all.

(He gives good head scratches. Sometimes it’s great having somebody still have hands on a boys’ night in.)

It’s just that somebody really ought to talk to him about what’s okay and what’s not, before he ends up on a different team and gets himself into trouble.

Matt uses his free hand to make sure that Danny’s secure, and turns his attention back to the screen.

 

_“Now, we got lucky here, because my buddy Ben sits right by the penalty box and he was happy to share this footage with us.”_

The next shots are obviously taken on somebody’s phone, but the picture’s clear and there’s sound to go with it.

It’s the home penalty box, and the linesmen are loading it with guys in green jerseys.

_“So we’ve got Chris Claymore, with a two minute minor for goalie interference. Dicky’s got two plus two for fighting. Jesse O’Connor’s got two plus two for fighting, and Michael Constantine’s picked up two plus two for fighting plus a game penalty for joining a fight. He’s gone to get changed, and his minors are being sat by George Feldstein.”_

Feldstein looks about eighteen, and a bit nervous about being stuck in the penalty box with riled-up werewolves. That suggests he’s new to the team, because Claymore’s not much older and he’s obviously confident that his werewolf teammates will look after him - as they’ve just shown.

_“In addition to these, Dickerson, O’Connor and Constantine will each have a shifting misconduct added to their personal records.”_

The vlogger’s buddy Ben scans over to the away penalty box, which is equally crowded, and then back to the home box with a sudden jerky movement.

Dickerson’s standing up, yelling through the glass at one of the away players who’s skating past far too slowly for it to be anything other than a taunt.

 _“Yeah? Why don’t you come in here and say that to me?!”_ He crashes the butt of his stick against the glass, and in the back of the shot one of the officials turns to see what the fuss is about.

 _“Dicky, shut up.”_ The penalty box attendant interrupts before it can escalate any further. _“Unless you want to be ejected?”_

_“This BEEP BEEP moron needs to BEEP-”_

The black and white jersey is getting closer, and the penalty box attendant has had enough. She’s a good foot shorter than any of the guys, and almost certainly human - although if you are going to have a werewolf running a penalty box, it’s just about acceptable if it’s the home box.

 _“Dicky, sit down.”_ The rest of the guys have shuffled along the bench so that there’s just about room for somebody who can handle werewolf levels of proximity to squeeze in. Dickerson turns instead like he’s going to bang his stick on the glass again, and the penalty box attendant reaches up and grabs him by the back of his jersey, right at the scruff of the neck.

Maybe he’s not expecting it, or maybe he just knows better than to argue with her, but Dickerson finds himself hauled backwards and planted unceremoniously into the gap his teammates have left for him.

 _“SIT!”_ The footage shows the back of her head, but Dickerson’s facing towards the camera and he’s finally starting to look contrite. _“And STAY there.”_

By the time the referee gets to them, all four players are sitting on the bench looking cowed, and no further penalties are added.

“Has Natalie ever done that to any of you?” Danny leans back as the video stops, pressing his shoulder into Sam’s side.

There’s a pause that might be a little too long, while the guys remind themselves that this is only Danny’s third season with them and he wasn’t around for that stretch towards the end of the 2014/15 season when they had six games in ten days in the run up to the full moon and a lot of tempers got a bit frayed.

“Oh, no.” Greg tells him, and Danny doesn’t have any of the hearing or scent capabilities which might allow him to detect when somebody’s lying to him. “Natalie’s never treated any of us like we’re badly behaved dogs.”

“She does usually have biscuits, though.” Sam’s off on his own train of thought again.

“What?”

“She won’t give you one in the box, obviously.” Sam misinterprets Danny’s surprise. “Not going to eat when you’re sitting a penalty, are you? It’s usually worth going to say hi in the bar afterwards, though…”


	3. Will

“Nick thought he was being funny the first time he bought me some of these.” Sarah gets the box of dentastix out of the cupboard and passes it to Will. “It was a joke gift when we were first dating.”

Will grins at her as he opens two of the individual wrappers while he still has opposable thumbs. Joke’s on Nick, these things are delicious.

 

One of the things that the guys on the team had wondered about, when he first moved in with Nick and Sarah, was why a guy with a werewolf’s sense of smell would want to live in a house with a baby.

“I mean, nappies smell bad enough to me, and I’m, you know, normal.”

Will refrained from pointing out that 1) being a werewolf doesn’t make Will abnomal, and 2) nobody thinks that Mac’s normal, human or otherwise.

He also didn’t attempt to explain that nappies aren’t a problem. They don’t smell _great_ , obviously, but there’s loads of information in there (even from a comfortable distance) about the health and mood of the cub and the actual poo-smell isn’t that significant.

No way Mac and his “normal” nose would understand that.

It’s pretty useful, too, now that Lily’s got to the stage in potty training where she sometimes leaves them little surprises around the house. It’s one of those things that’s more complicated with werewolf kids, because as well as teaching them that they should always use the potty or the toilet, there’s the added complication that when they’re on four legs it’s fine to do it in the garden. Will and Sarah are both able to catch Lily in the act when she tries to go potty behind the sofa, and transfer her to an appropriate location. Nick has to stumble across it by accident.

 

Will leaves the dentastix on the seat of one of the kitchen stools, where he’ll be able to reach them once he’s shifted but the kids can’t get to them. Sarah’s putting mashed banana into a puppy Kong for Lily, so Will gets a teething stick out of the freezer for Elijah. Nick insisted that they buy them in two colours, so he can have the red ones for his human teeth and the blue ones for his puppy teeth. Sarah grumbles that it’s the same mouth, just a different shape, and there’s no hygiene benefit to separating them, but it’s easier just to humour Nick over this. Elijah likes them whichever form he’s in, and he doesn’t care about colours yet anyway.

It must be tough for Nick, that both of his kids inherited their mother’s lycanthropy and he’s the odd one out in his own family, but Will thinks it’s nice. He knows that his own sister always hated that Will got the werewolf gene and she didn’t, always felt left out and sometimes refused to come out in the garden and throw a ball for him, and it’s good that Lily and Elijah won’t have that between them as they grow up.

 

Will leaves Sarah rinsing the banana off her hands and wanders through to the living room to see if the kids are ready to shift.

Lily’s sitting on the floor, turning the pages of a book with great concentration even though she can’t read yet.

“Where’s Elijah?” Will asks her.

“He’s got a stinky bum.” Lily looks up from her book. Her _I’ve been interrupted_ expression is so like Sarah’s that Will has to smile.

“Is he having his nappy changed?”

“Yup.” The _yup_ instead of _yes_ is a new development, picked up from her cousins, and Lily takes great delight in popping the p at the end.

“Here we are!” Nick strolls into the room, carrying Elijah who’s already puppy-shaped. Elijah whines and wriggles to get down, so Nick slowly lowers him towards the floor.

He pauses when Elijah’s about six inches above the carpet, because his little legs always start pumping like a cartoon character charging up for a run, and so far it hasn’t stopped being funny.

“Don’t be mean.” Will tells him, although he’s grinning as he says it, and Nick sets his son carefully on the floor.

Elijah makes a wobbly beeline for his sister, clearly aiming to get his teeth on her book, and Lily lifts it over her head.

“No, ‘Lijah. Don’t chew.”

Considering they have two werewolf puppies, very few of the human toys have teeth marks in. (The same cannot be said for the tray on the high chair.)

Elijah goes up on his back legs, front paws braced against his sister as he stretches for the forbidden book.

“No!” Lily pushes him over, knowing instinctively that she can be much rougher with her puppy-brother than the human baby. “Mine.” She gets up before he can try using her as a ladder again.

Elijah yips at her, obviously hoping that her moving is going to lead to somebody to play with.

“Wait a minute!” Lily’s learnt that phrase - and the exasperated tone she always delivers it in - directly from her mother, and Nick and Will share another grin. “I’m tidying.”

The book goes back into the right space on the shelf, and Lily has a quick look around for any other stray toys. Will’s almost as proud of her as Nick must be.

“Okay.” Lily talks to herself. “Good.” She turns to Nick and holds her arms up. “Daddy, hug.”

It’s part of her little routine. Finish playing, which means putting her toys away, a human-hug with Daddy, and then she’s ready to shift.

For all that she’s inherited Nick’s neat-freak tendencies, Lily has retained a werewolf toddler’s attitude to getting undressed, which is that it must happen as fast as possible with minimal concern as to the appropriateness of the location or time.

 

Nick picks up her clothes while Will pops upstairs to change and shift. By the time he gets back down, Sarah’s flopped out in front of the gas fire. Elijah and Lily are tumbling over each other in a muddle of paws and tails.

Will pads through to the kitchen to collect the dentastix, carrying them back through and dropping one by Sarah’s nose.

“I can’t believe you eat things that have been in Will's mouth.” They’re all well aware of Nick’s opinion on the subject, he says this every time. Sarah holds eye contact with him and chomps pointedly on her chewy snack.

“Yuck.” Nick piles Lily’s clothes on the end of the sofa. “Okay, kids. Who wants something to chew?”

It’s a combination of long practice and goalie reflexes that stop him from tripping over his children as they race him to the kitchen.

Elijah’s back within moments, teething stick firmly in his jaws as he settles down with his mother. Nick’s chattering gently in the background, keeping Lily company in the kitchen. Will can hear the Kong bumping off the cabinets as she chases it around, but she won’t bring it in to join the rest of them.

She doesn’t want to get banana on the carpet.

She might have inherited her mother’s lycanthropy, but when it comes to looking after her things and keeping her space tidy, Lily’s definitely her father’s daughter.


End file.
